europeforvisitors - 3:31 pm on Sep 5, 2007 (gmt 0)

I can think of a travel site that has received unsolicited links from international media, a "Best of the Web" award from a major magazine, and plugs in several important guidebooks despite having AdSense ads on most pages.

As for me, I certainly don't mind linking to sites that use AdSense ads. What I won't do is link to sites where the editorial content is merely filler for pages of AdSense ads, or where the ads have become the tail that wags the dog. There are a lot of those sites around. Some AdSense "publishers" don't know much about their topics or about publishing, and others are simply greedy.

Bottom line: It's the content and the overall packaging of the site--not the presence of AdSense ads per se--that determine whether I link to a site. In my experience, that's the same standard used by major media (which tend to use AdSense or other contextual ads on their own pages).